Posted on 11/27/2020 9:53:45 AM PST by Alter Kaker
Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof.
We have neither here. The Trump Presidential Campaign asserts that Pennsylvania’s 2020 election was unfair. But as lawyer Rudolph Giuliani stressed, the Campaign “doesn’t plead fraud. . . . [T]his is not a fraud case.” Instead, it objects that Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State and some counties restricted poll watchers and let voters fix technical defects in their mail-in ballots. It offers nothing more.
This case is not about whether those claims are true. Rather, the Campaign appeals on a very narrow ground: whether the District Court abused its discretion in not letting the Campaign amend its complaint a second time. It did not. Most of the claims in the Second Amended Complaint boil down to issues of state law. But Pennsylvania law is willing to overlook many technical defects. It favors counting votes as long as there is no fraud. Indeed, the Campaign has already litigated and lost many of these issues in state courts.
The Campaign tries to repackage these state-law claims as unconstitutional discrimination. Yet its allegations are vague and conclusory. It never alleges that anyone treated the Trump campaign or Trump votes worse than it treated the Biden campaign or Biden votes. And federal law does not require poll watchers or specify how they may observe. It also says nothing about curing technical state-law errors in ballots. Each of these defects is fatal, and the proposed Second Amended Complaint does not fix them. So the District Court properly denied leave to amend again.
Nor does the Campaign deserve an injunction to undo Pennsylvania’s certification of its votes. The Campaign’s claims have no merit. The number of ballots it specifically challenges is far smaller than the roughly 81,000-vote margin of victory. And it never claims fraud or that any votes were cast by illegal voters. Plus, tossing out millions of mail-in ballots would be drastic and unprecedented, disenfranchising a huge swath of the electorate and upsetting all down-ballot races too. That remedy would be grossly disproportionate to the procedural challenges raised. So we deny the motion for an injunction pending appeal.
They aren’t claiming there’s no fraud. They’re just stating that these particular court case do not deal with fraud, they deal with improper election procedures that would invalidate enough ballots that were incorrectly cast.
The appeal was technically about one specific thing - whether Giuliani could amend the complaint twice (he amended it a first time to delete everything EXCEPT the equal protection argument). Under the rules of the Court you can amend the legal complaint once, but need the permission of the Court and opposing parties to amend it more than once.
Giuliani told the Court that, despite getting paid $20,000 a day or whatever, he accidentally deleted the parts of the complaint he deleted in his first filing. At no point did anything from the Giuliani camp allege fraud. Instead, this was a “My Dog Ate the Due Process Part of my Complaint Appeal.” The Court was not amused.
‘...(Gravitation is a theory, not a fact. It should be approached with an open mind...)...”
It’s just something you fall into !
Yep. He was masterful.
I LOVE Rudy.
As everyone who knows me here knows already :)
He’s a king on staten isand :)
But even I must admit I didn’t think he had that kind of presentation left in him.
But I do think God is on Trump’s side and with God anything is possible.
He’s lost a few steps that’s for sure, but he’s a patriot and loyal to Trump until the end.
And he was my favorite mayor..which isnt saying much but still... :)
have a good day FRiend
Ty, and to you as well...
The only (overt) suggestion I’ve seen you give is that we ‘vote the bastards out’.
We tried, with our votes, to bar the bastards from getting IN; and we were very obviously cheated in numerous ways - including some that, as Sidney has put it, we couldn’t even imagine.
You don’t seem to have any answer to the problem of widespread election fraud, in the face of which all your voting will get you absolutely nowhere - but the ‘bastards’ everywhere.
Well then it’s time for a little Thomas Payne. We generally sit back and bitch on our side. Time to be vocal and in plain view. Protests and civil disobedience. When we are tired of it we have constitutional remedies on our side. The left is nothing but bullies. Funny thing about bullies is hit them in the nose once and they go away
But sitting and waiting for another government body to help? Seriously? How’s the Obamacare appeal to USSC working for you. It seems we have lost our rugged American attitude
I”m not acquainted with anyone named ‘Thomas Payne’.
Uh-oh. All of that indicates we're potentially heading for a Constitutional crisis, if the contested swing-state Republican legislatures & Democrat governors/SoS's choose competing slates.
For the House to be given the responsibility of electing the President, FIRST the Vote Counting Session must rule that no one has a majority. With only two candidates, this can only happen with a 269-269 tie OR if the Congress disallows enough votes to create a no majority situation. With the party makeup of the new Congress (270 Democrats and 265 Republicans) this is not going to happen.
Of course it could happen. First, those specific total counts of Democrats and Republicans you stated are yet to be determined (e.g., two Georgia Senator run-offs). Second, those two totals are irrelevant. If the joint session can't resolve electoral count disputes, then the two chambers meet separately to determine which slate of electors to count for each state with multiple slates. If the two chambers don't agree, then neither slate is accepted and that state loses its electoral votes. And there are other conditional procedures specified as well. Then there's another clause in the EV counting act that says if the two chambers can't agree, whichever slate of electors was certified by the executive of that state must be counted. However, all of that conflicts with the Constitution which says that each state appoints electors in whatever manner the state's legislature directs. So if Republican state legislatures believe it's election fraud, they can pick a Trump slate. Also, there's not even consensus about what "majority" of electors means. If things head in that direction by January, it could be one hell of a mess.
270-265 is a best case scenario, presuming the GOP wins both Georgia seats.
Second, those two totals are irrelevant. If the joint session can't resolve electoral count disputes, then the two chambers meet separately to determine which slate of electors to count for each state with multiple slates.
My point was, the Joint Session WILL resolve any disputes in favor of the Biden slates.
My point was, the Joint Session WILL resolve any disputes in favor of the Biden slates.
How would that work in practice? (I can't find specifics in the Constitution, amendment, and EV counting Act.) If a state sends opposing slates, there are provision conflicts across the Constitution, amendment, and the EV counting Act (and its amendments). Will each Congressmen vote on which slate to choose? If so, then the vote will likely cling near the party line 270-265 that you indicated (or even worse for Trump, given so many RINOs). Or is there a minimum threshold of joint-session Congressmen who must pick a specific slate in order to count that state's electoral votes? The Constitution and EV counting Act are mum on that.
That brings up other interesting questions: Why are there lots of RINOs ... but no DINOs? Why is it always a Republican SCOTUS Justice who morphs into a swing Justice ("The Blue Line": O'Connor, Souter-->swing-->left-wing, Kennedy, Roberts) but never a Democrat Justice?And why did Republican Chief Justice John Roberts suddenly veer to join the liberals? Do you think Sleepy Joe called up Roberts and said: Look, here's the deal. C'mon, man!
In practice, what will happen is that Mike Pence will announce that he has received two envelopes from Pennsylvania (if in fact he does), and that as presiding officer he will rule that the votes signed by the PA legislature will be counted and those signed by the Governor will be discarded.
There will be immediate objections. The vote counting act allows rulings from the chair to be appealed to the floor, so Pence’s ruling will be voted on by the Joint Session, whose decision is final.
There will be immediate objections. The vote counting act allows rulings from the chair to be appealed to the floor, so Pence’s ruling will be voted on by the Joint Session, whose decision is final.
From my reading of the EV counting Act, it's the two separate chambers, not the joint session, that vote regarding competing slates. So you'll have the House voting for the governor/SoS's Biden slate and the Senate voting for the state legislature's Trump slate (assuming Republicans win at least one Georgia Senate seat). Given that standoff, the Act states Congress shall choose the governor/SoS's slate. But that conflicts with the Constitution that says state legislatures determine the manner of selecting electors. Even worse, there's no consensus regarding the meaning of the term "majority" of electoral votes. Still sounds like a brewing Constitutional crisis to me.
In some respects, it's similar to 2000, when the SCOTUS needed to step in to stop a potential catastrophe. The obstinate Florida SC intentionally ignored the SCOTUS and wanted to keep doing recounts and make the mess far worse. So the SCOTUS finally decided to intervene to avoid a never-ending disaster in Florida.
But 2020 is far more complex. First, there's a Democrat Party Cabal international conspiracy that has perpetrated massive election fraud, thus seeking to totally destroy U.S. elections and therefore the very foundation of the country. And second, it involves at least six states, possibly many more (or even all 50 states?). So sometime in the near future, I expect the SCOTUS to once again weigh in, just as it did in 2000. I could be wrong (given so many RINOs) but that's my WAG.
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